Saturday Session

Today was a very productive day. After the gym this morning I sat down at the PC and started a 10 hour working session devoted to the game. Here's some examples of what I accomplished:

• Prevented camera from locking when focused on targets

• Adjusted mana ball to be more visually interesting and increased distortion

• Hooked up the level up UI

• Hooked up the skill level up and experience gain UI

• Added a spell icon pack

• Added a crafting resource icon pack

• Updated the Items table with new icons (this introduced a bug that I'll attempt to fix tomorrow)

• Oxygen bar now properly shows at 100% oxygen level and hides when the player's oxygen level is recharging

• Added active state effects to UI from attribute manager for temperature, warmth, cold, poison, sickness, hot, on fire, drunk, bleeding, wounded, fatigued, low energy, hungry, thirsty

• Added level up 'ding' sound effect placeholder (that good old fashioned EQ 'ding'!)

• Move voice over subtitles to top of screen. I changed the code to move them to the top in the C++ code and saved it but still need to recompile and 'Build' it. This requires downloading the engine source, recompiling it with the modified file, and using that as your engine source. More work than I wanted to deal with today, so it will remain on the to-do list for later

I added a few more items to my short-list to focus on tomorrow:

• Tab target cycle between targets

• Hook up stats UI

• Hook up inventory UI

• Dragging UI windows to new locations

• Selecting enemies with the LMB

• Deselecting enemies with escape

• Select yourself with F1

• Deselect yourself with escape

• Bonus: Recompile Unreal from source to fix subtitles location

• Bonus: Start messing with monk class combat system and abilities

I've also narrowed down the classes for the game and their specialties:

• Warrior (Tank, DPS)

• Enchanter (Charm, DPS, Crowd Control)

• Shaman (DPS, Slow, DOTs, secondary healer, primary stat buffer)

• Monk (Pure melee, DPS, best puller, feign death)

• Wizard (Strongest DPS, teleportation, pet)

• Cleric (Alchemist, primary healer, primary HP/AC buffer)

• Archer (Ranged DPS, nature buffs, second best puller)

A very productive day. I feel that I have a solid grasp on how the engine handles UI and linking the systems together. I am learning so much each day and I have to force myself away from the PC to take breaks. Find something you love and do it all day and you'll never work again.

Cheers, Vinny